This post was in the Writer’s Almanac yesterday, and was forwarded to me by my friend Suzanne Weinburg as well.  Reminding me of Deepak Chopra’s centering thought for a few days ago, “A gift resides in every moment.”  Thursday’s  meditation was on intention, and on creating a vision of what you want.  According to Deepak, “Attention energizes, intention transforms.”

In my intention, I am seeing how every word, every thought, every action is a part of that river of intention, and how in the absence of attention, those little words, thoughts and actions can become wasteful, random and careless if I am not aware.  That does not mean that I have to be editing myself every minute, but that I need to feel the resonance of what I am expressing, even inwardly, and how it is rageful, or tragic or just obsessively ruminative, I am losing the forward-thinking, expansive possibilities of my deepest desire.  Profound loss, or devastation of a dream – let’s say the loss of a child – can shatter open the doors and create a necessity for change.

Last night, I was listening to sound effects – car crashes, buildings falling, terrible cracks of thunder and lightening.  I am looking for something for a score I am creating for a new solo.  Listening to them last night, I realized that they mirrored something in m experience (and how!) and that by bringing them fully into consciousness, I was also letting something go, or bringing it out of those obsessive, hidden ruminative places into creative light.  Giving myself permission to move, to keep moving, to dance.

Permission Granted

by David Allen Sullivan

You do not have to choose the bruised peach
or misshapen pepper others pass over.
You don’t have to bury
your grandmother’s keys underneath
her camellia bush as the will states.

You don’t need to write a poem about
your grandfather coughing up his lung
into that plastic tube—the machine’s wheezing
almost masking the kvetching sisters
in their Brooklyn kitchen.

You can let the crows amaze your son
without your translation of their cries.
You can lie so long under this
summer shower your imprint
will be left when you rise.

You can be stupid and simple as a heifer.
Cook plum and apple turnovers in the nude.
Revel in the flight of birds without
dreaming of flight. Remember the taste of
raw dough in your mouth as you edged a pie.

Feel the skin on things vibrate. Attune
yourself. Close your eyes. Hum.
Each beat of the world’s pulse demands
only that you feel it. No thoughts.
Just the single syllable: Yes …

See the homeless woman following
the tunings of a dead composer?
She closes her eyes and sways
with the subways. Follow her down,
inside, where the singing resides.

“Permission Granted” by David Allen Sullivan, from Strong-Armed Angels. © Hummingbird Press, 2008. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)